Trick or Treat
by mosylu
Summary: Caitlin loves Halloween. Or at least, she did. Try as he might, Cisco just can't seem to get her excited about the spookiness this year. Takes place early S1.


Requested by wanderingxrivers on Tumblr. My last little bit of early Season 1 Killervibe fluff before the premiere. If you'd like to see Cisco's costume, check out Lord Mesa's artwork, which inspired it: /p/7n93s_vH8y/

When Barry had gotten struck by lightning, the stores had all been in full Christmas fever. When he woke up, everything yelled "Back to School," and within a week, they switched over to Halloween - orange and purple, pumpkins and skulls and spiderwebs.

"It's disorienting," he complained to Cisco, the first week of October.

"I get that," Cisco said, positioning a plastic pumpkin full of candy on the work station. "But me, I like it when Halloween invades all the stores."

"All those giant bags of fun-size candy bars on sale? Yeah, that's nice." Barry stuck his hand into the pumpkin.

To his surprise, Cisco smacked his wrist.

"What?!" Barry cradled his arm, pouting.

"Sorry, dude, I just know you're going to eat the whole thing before Caitlin gets here." Cisco tossed him a nutrient bar. "Eat this if you're really starving."

Barry wrinkled his nose, because the bars worked, but they didn't exactly taste good. "Is that her favorite kind of candy or something?"

"Or something," Cisco said mysteriously.

Just because he was curious, Barry stuck around long enough to see Caitlin come in, look at the pumpkin, and sit down at her computer without any other reaction. He also saw Cisco's face fall. As he zipped off to work - late again - he wondered what his friend had been hoping for.

As far as he could tell, Caitlin wasn't exactly the Halloween type.

* * *

Over the next few weeks, he saw Cisco bring in little skeletons to hang from the machines, rig up a tissue-paper ghost to swoop through the cortex, and leave tiny pumpkins with Sharpie'd jack-o-lantern faces on every flat surface.

He also saw Caitlin yell at him over the skeletons, rip down the ghost, and throw away the pumpkins.

"Seriously, don't you think you're pushing this a little hard?" he asked. "Caitlin doesn't seem to be into it."

"But she loves Halloween," Cisco said despairingly, cleaning up the spiderwebs that had been the source of this morning's yelling.

"Yeah, that's why she threatened to stuff that plastic spider where the sun don't shine," Barry said, reaching up to get the last shred of fake spiderwebs.

"She does, though!" Cisco stared sadly at his fistfuls of wispy nylon. "Or she did."

"Um," Barry said, thinking he knew what was going on. "Cisco. Are you sure it wasn't … it wasn't _Ronnie_ who loved Halloween?"

Neither Cisco nor Caitlin had said very much about her dead fiance, but Barry had gathered that he'd been as much Cisco's friend as Caitlin was. More, maybe.

Maybe Cisco was just missing his friend terribly, and it was coming out like this.

But Cisco shook his head. "Okay, look." He brought up Facebook and flipped to an album from the year before. "This? Was her party last year."

The video focused in on a giant spider with glowing eyes, then pulled out to reveal a dining room table beneath it, spread with traditional Halloween fare like foil-wrapped eyeball candies, suspicious green punch, pumpkin-shaped cookies, and cupcakes with sculpted ghost frosting. Cisco's voice said, "Give me the grand tour."

Caitlin walked into the frame, but it was a Caitlin Barry had never seen before. She was dressed as Rosie the Riveter, with bright red lipstick on her smiling mouth. When she answered Cisco, her voice was full of laughter. "Over here, we have the _terrifying_ buffet - "

"Oh, did you make those cupcakes yourself?"

She threw a foil wrapped eyeball, and the video dipped and swooped for a moment as Cisco apparently ducked. "I worked hard on those!"

Cisco turned the video around to himself. He was dressed as a zombie, horribly grey and mangled-looking. "Note to self: skip the cupcakes."

Another eyeball bounced off his shoulder. Caitlin didn't seem to be truly mad, though. Practically bouncing with glee, she showed off the rest of the decorations. Spiderwebs draped every doorway. A witch swooped across the ceiling, cackling gleefully. Tombstones with silly epitaphs like, "Here lies Henry Blake / stepped on the gas / instead of the brake" and "Didn't forward the email to the next ten people" lined the walls.

It was all neatly and beautifully arranged, considering how garish it was, and clearly Caitlin's handiwork.

Cisco clicked to a picture. "She used to make Ronnie do these couples costumes. He put up with it because she got such a kick out of it."

Caitlin the Riveter again, showing off her bicep, making a tough face with laughter in her eyes. A tall, good-looking man in a WWII army uniform hugged her from behind, grinning. Ronnie, Barry guessed. In the background, the apartment teemed with costumed people.

"She kept saying that when they bought a house, we were gonna build her a haunted house in the front yard every year and it was gonna be _the_ place for trick-or-treaters." Cisco looked sadly at the Caitlin on the screen.

"Maybe it's not the year for it," Barry said gently, remembering his first Christmas after his mom had died.

"But she loves it," Cisco said again.

"Yeah, I know, and she shared it with you guys for the past few years and maybe she just … can't this year."

The faint whir of Wells' chair alerted them to his presence. He said, "Caitlin had some strong words for me."

Cisco gulped. "I, uh - "

"Cisco, I realize we're not precisely a cutting-edge research facility anymore, but we're still not a kindergarten classroom. Please leave the decorations at home."

"Okay," Cisco said with a heavy sigh. "Okay. I'll keep it out of the lab."

Barry couldn't help but notice, he hadn't said he'd stop completely.

* * *

"I swear it," Cisco said on Halloween night. "We are gonna go over there and we are gonna drag her out to a bar or something and she is going to have fun if it kills her."

Barry thought it was more likely to kill Cisco, as determined as he was about this. But he trailed along after Cisco as the other man marched down the hall of an apartment building. The going was slow due to the milling crowds of monsters, princesses, witches, and one robot lurching along in aluminum-foil-covered boxes, falling over every so often. Barry smiled awkwardly at the parents, who gave him suspicious looks.

Even in his Nerf Rambo getup, though, Cisco seemed to be a familiar face. He got smiles and waves, and the robot tried to give him a hug. Or maybe just fell over on him; it was hard to say. Cisco picked the kid up, plucked off the robot head, and made a few adjustments to the eyeholes before popping it back over the worshipful little face. "Better?"

"Uh-huh," the robot said, and lurched off.

Cisco knocked and yelled, "Caitlin! Caaaaaaaitlin! We're going out and getting sh - uh - sugar high for Halloween and - "

The door swung open. Cisco stopped dead, mid-bellow. He blinked at Caitlin.

She scowled back. "Why are you hammering on my door?" She was wearing a long blue velvet dress with a sparkly, pale blue, sheer cloak, a blond wig, and a plastic tiara.

Cisco found his voice. "What are you wearing?"

"It's a costume," she growled. "It's Halloween. If you say 'trick or treat' I might give you candy."

Barry said immediately, "Trick or treat!" Sure, the promise had been delivered like a death threat, but hey, candy.

She looked at him. "What are you supposed to be?"

He lowered his voice. "A guy who can't run at the speed of sound."

Her eyes narrowed. "Very sly. Not sure I should accept that."

"Please?"

She picked up a bowl and held it out. "One piece," she said sternly.

He chose a mini Snickers and ate it in one bite.

"Cisco?" she said, holding out the bowl.

"I wanted to see if you'd like to go out for Halloween," he said, pretty meekly for a guy with camo paint all over his face. He did pick out a Kit Kat bar, though.

"I'd rather stay in," she said. "But you can go."

A little cluster of kids pushed past them. "TRICKERTREEEEEAT!"

"Oh, um, Fiona? And a witch? And a doctor? Very nice. And what are you?" she asked a kid dressed all in red.

"I'm the Streak!"

Cisco choked on his candy bar. Barry looked at the ceiling, biting his lip, trying not to giggle like an idiot.

 _Omigod. Holy crap. Somebody had dressed up as him for Halloween._

Not very well. Mostly the kid had just worn everything red and a red devil mask over his face. But hey, it wasn't like there were any good pictures of him, on purpose. Barry had certainly had worse costumes in his day.

"Very nice," Caitlin said blandly, as if she wasn't one of the best people in the world to judge the accuracy of the costume. "Pick one."

After the kids had swarmed off, trailed by a dad who looked like he was getting a headache from the earsplitting shrieks at every apartment, Caitlin set the bowl down on a table just inside her door. "Really," she said. "Go ahead. It's all right. I've got a stack of movies." She gestured over her shoulder, where Jack Skellington sang on the TV screen against a gigantic moon.

"Ooo, _Nightmare before Christmas_!" Cisco walked in without waiting for an invitation and flopped right down on the couch.

"Do you want us to go?" Barry asked her.

She looked over her shoulder at Cisco, and her face went soft for a moment. "You can stay if you want, I guess."

* * *

By nine o'clock, Barry had left, summoned by a text message from Iris, who was at a bar whooping it up with terrifying-sounding shots. The waves of trick-or-treaters had died away, with only a few straggling teenagers wearing bare-minimum costumes coming around. Caitlin made them do things like recite the periodic table or sing pop songs before she would give them a treat. Such shabby effort for her favorite holiday offended her on a primal level.

Cisco snickered in the background, yelling suggestions for stunts, while the teenagers winced and apologized when they got helium mixed up with hydrogen.

Even they'd mostly stopped coming now, probably because all their friends had texted about the crazy lady who lived in 4C and wouldn't give you a frickin' Almond Joy if you didn't know the atomic weight of lithium.

So they were left with the movies, which was just fine by her.

"Elsa, huh? I see you more as Anna," Cisco said to her as they sat with their feet up on the coffee table, watching _Hocus Pocus_. "The hair matches better."

"That's what wigs are for," she said, flicking the long braid over her shoulder and repositioning the plastic tiara.

"Yeah, but she was kind of scary."

"I'm kind of scary."

"True," he acknowledged.

Caitlin stared at the TV. "Plus," she said quietly, "Anna had Kristoff. Elsa was alone."

He looked at her a moment, then put his arm around her shoulders. "Caitlin. Oh my god. Did you even watch the movie? Elsa wasn't alone. That was only the whole point."

Caitlin took off her tiara, set it on her lap, and let her head rest on his shoulder. "No, that's right," she said. "Elsa wasn't alone."

FINIS


End file.
